Exactly what it says on the tin.

YSaC, Vol. 399: How much is that doggy(?) in the window?

Puppies Needing a Good Home

Two girl puppies 13 weeks old needing a good home. The father is a golden doodle and the mother is Lasah, Boston Terror, and Corgie. The mother and father are both are dogs and they mated. she had 10 puppies and one died the first night. We had nine left and got ride of all of them but 2. Their is nothing wrong with them as far as we can tell. They eat find, play well with other dogs including the neighborhood dogs. They are just in need of a loving family to take them in. Please e-mail me if you have any questions.

“Oh! Oh! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter!”

Why yes, this ad DOES raise a few questions:

Wasn’t the “Boston Terror” a serial killer from the 1960s?

Does the author think that sometimes things that are not dogs mate, and produce dogs?

Or perhaps they think that immaculate conception is occasionally a possibility, which must in this case be deliberately ruled out?

Finally, I am intrigued by this statement:
“They eat find, play well with other dogs”

Clearly, this makes no sense. But how to correct it? The obvious choice would be:

“They eat fine, and play well with other dogs.”

However, I much prefer:

“They eat, find, and play well with other dogs.”

After all, that only requires one additional comma. What’s a little implied canine cannibalism in the endless quest for punctuational efficiency?

Meeee-ow.
Expecting people to be able to spell “our” correctly isn’t the same as knowing (or knowing and bending anyway for a good joke) the finer points of Catholic doctrine which get confused even by intellectuals.

Your catty criticism of this blog entry would have a stronger impact if you provided definitions of the Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth of Jesus and how a confusion of such diminished the humor of this blog in the context of mating dogs. Given that the entry did not mention the Virgin Birth of Jesus, your inclusion of this religious tenet is without context. I will not do your job for you pertaining to issues not raised in the original blog entry. That was your job. You have left us bewildered.

However, I will defend the use of the reference to the Immaculate Conception.

The Craigslist post makes a point of explaining the conception of the puppies in question. This is typically an understood phenomenon that needs no such explanation. The lineage of the parents is detailed in the post. Such would normally be enough when selling or giving away dogs. To include the fact that “the mother and father are both are dogs and they mated” implies that some other form of conception is possible for dogs; either that non-canines can produce canines or that behaviors not classified as mating can result in a pregnancy. The blog entry engages in a bit of tongue-in-cheek activity (which is why I read this blog) to compare an unnecessary explanation of dogs mating with the possibility that the Holy Spirit could have visited the mother of this pup and through God’s grace, impregnated her with the blessing of puppies. The Holy Spirit being eliminated from the list of paternal candidates by the use of the text “both are dogs” and conception without the stain of sin being ruled out in favor of sperm delivery via old fashioned sex.

Given your rude criticism of this blog entry, I cannot understand why you would have come here in the first place. I’ll await your explanations of the differences between the two Christian tenets you’ve cited pertaining to the original Craigslist post. Explaining the difference between the two in any other context would be off topic. Please include a description of how this misuse has dampened your pleasure of this YSaC entry and how the correction would have improved it.

So, according to the dogma they are completely separate events. This difference relates to the post because a proper reference would have been to the virgin birth and not the immaculate conception.

To answer your question, I think this problematic reference depleted my enjoyment of this post because it was incorrect and this blog seems to thrive on being correct. If one is going to be snarky concerning people’s use of grammar (the dreaded “their” “there” “they’re”) I think the people on their high horse should use correct references.

I wasn’t intending to be rude, perhaps I was riled by the repeated references to the Ivy Leagues (in past posts) and jumped at the chance to use my Catholic indoctrination from my youth. Otherwise I quite enjoy the site.

No snarkiness intended, but I’m really not getting the difference between the two, unless by “the conception of Mary” you literally mean when Mary herself was conceived. Probably it is because I’m not Catholic. Is there any way you could clarify it further? I’m serious, I’d really like to know.

I would posit that while the definition of the two may put the correct usage in your court, popular usage would put it back into the YSaC post’s.

The Virgin Birth, according to the church, does look at the gammut of pregnancy from the point of conception to the physical preservation of Mary’s maidenhood at birth. In that sense, your approach does fit perfectly. However, the general public’s confusion comes from the approach that the term applies only to the birth.

Conception being immaculate by the Holy Spirit would fit the usage here even if it differs from a more dogmatic approach. It’s viewed by the public as conception without the sin of sex when it’s both more and different than that. In a pedantic view, it’s wrong. But if you allow for shades of gray, it fits nicely.

Definitions over-simplified and slightly askew, I’m sure. Catechism was a while back for me.

“I wasn’t intending to be rude”
proofreading isn’t limited to grammar. Before you hit the “submit” button, you should reread the comment. If there are no typos but you sound like a giant dick, you may still want to consider rephrasing.

It is technically possible for a dog to become pregnant without mating without it being an “immaculate conception”. Artificial insemination is done frequently when a bitch can’t or won’t become pregnant in the old fashioned way. Though I seriously doubt that’s the case here.

Who would have thought that “puppies for sale” would bring out such a pedantic and dogmatic [pun!] rant?

I believe the term “Jesus Tapdancing Christ” has finally found its niche and is finally wholly appropriate in this context! Get your Ecumenical Virgin Birth facts straight people or there will be no more posting at YS@C for you!!!

I think that this one could be attributed exclusively to the kind of excessive trust on spell check that has been the ruin of many a poor boy. Fine/find is an easy mistake to made, considering that “e” is just above “d” on the keyboard; terror/terrier and are/our are mental slips that may happen while typing (I am quite prone to those, myself). And all of them are mistakes that Word will not mark as such.

That’s ok, goldendoodle is typically presented as one word as well, so they actually managed to blow pretty much every breed they mentioned. Though actually the d in the ‘doodle’ part makes no sense, it’s a leftover from labradoodle, and the d actually goes with the labrador part. So technically it should be goldenoodle. Which I think I like better, it sounds like lunch 🙂

See in my mind – when they say ‘neighborhood dogs’ – I immediately think of Snoop Dogg. Apparently he plays fine with these two bi-atches (as one would expect). It also hints at why one of the 10 puppies died the first night – Calvin put ‘a cap in hith ath gangthta thtyle for shisl’.

Ahh, this post brought me back to my intro to bio college days when my professor was talking about species. He drew a picture of a chihuahua mating with a St. Bernard. It can be done but maybe it shouldn’t.

So how many dog breeds are in those puppies now? Five including the monstrous Boston Terror? Is this supposed to be some new chimeric designer dog or something? *sigh* Clueless backyard breeders make my brain hurt.

Boston TERROR is correct. They are only referred to as Boston TERRIERS to lure the unsuspecting into adopting these crazed beasts. It isn’t until after they’ve eaten half a sofa & the carpeting off of several stairs that we understand their true nature.

Perhaps the craigslist poster feared that potential adopters would be scared off by part-wolf puppies. And thus felt the need to list the breeds involved, and then reiterate that both parents were dogs as opposed to a wolf and a dog.

Because, when I adopt a puppy I always think, “Did a wolf contribute to this equation?”